ECONOMIC CONDITION OF JAVA. 177 



become analogous to that of Ireland, and depopulation become inevitable ? In tbe 

 province of Bantam under tbe British administration the greatest impulse was 

 given to the development of large estates, and here also the land, belonging mostly 

 to absentee owners, is the worst cultivated, here the indigent classes are most 

 numerous, famines most frequent and often attended by bread riots. The famous 

 novel of Max Havelaar, which deeply moved the public conscience of Holland, 

 described in eloquent language the deplorable condition of the Bantam peasantry, 

 and since then there has been no change for the better. 



The staple crop is rice, which in many districts constitutes the exclusive food 

 of the people. Hence, despite the enormous annual production, the export of this 

 grain is slight compared with that of Burmah and Cochin China. The rice-fields 

 exceed a total area of 5,000,000 acres, covering not only the marshy low-lying tracts 

 and regularly irrigated sloping valleys, but also the so-called Tegah or dry grounds, 

 yielding the most nutritive varieties, as well as the flanks of the mountains to a 

 height of over 4,000 feet, below the zone of coffee plantations. After the harvest, the 

 ditches and reservoirs are emptied, and a second harvest made of the myriads of fish 

 that swarm in these waters during the year. Fevers are endemic in the Saivah, or 

 wet rice districts, but are less fatal than in other regions lying even farther from the 

 equator. This is due to the fact that the Javanese do not allow the waters to stag- 

 nate, but always keep up the current, and also plant a curtain of large trees round 

 their villages. 



In Madura, where the surface is nearl}^ everywhere gently undulating, scarcely 

 any rice is grown ; here the chief alimentary grain is maize. 



Although the Javanese peasantry never drink coffee, those residing in the pre- 

 scribed coffee districts have to cultivate a strip of 600 feet, and to supply fresh plants 

 in case of failure. It is from this source that Holland derives, or has hitherto 

 derived, her " colonial bonus," and consequently to it the natives are indebted for 

 the oppressive system of forced labour. The coffee plant was not introduced till 

 towards the close of the seventeenth century ; yet Java produces from a 

 sixth to an eighth of the yield of the whole world, or an average of about 150 

 million pounds, valued at £2,000,000. Since the end of the Napoleonic wars, 

 when this island was restored to Holland, the yield had gone on increasing from 

 decade to decade till recently. Now, however, although several private capitalists 

 have entered into competition with the Government, it seems to be at a standstill, 

 or rather to have entered a period of decline. In 1876, the aestrwaivve he mileia 

 vastatrix, which had already wasted the plantations of Ceylon, made its appearance 

 in Sumatra, and three years later attacked those of Java, Precautions have also 

 to be taken against other parasites, such as the xylotricus qiiadrupes, the combined 

 attacks of which have reduced the Government crop from nearly 80,000 tons in 

 1879 to less than 18,000 in 1887. 



The Javanese coffee-planters have now great hopes of the Liberian variety, 

 which resists both the hemileia fungus and the xylotricus borer. But merely 

 to replace over 200 million plants would alone be tantamount to an economic 

 revolution. 

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